Guest post written by The Bachlorette Party author Camilla Sten
Camilla Sten has been writing stories since she was a young girl. In 2019, Camilla published the now internationally acclaimed, hair-raising novel, The Lost Village. Rights for The Lost Village have been sold to nineteen territories around the world including film and TV. Her third novel for adults, The Resting Place, was one of Goodreads Most Popular Horror Books of 2022 and the same year Camilla was longlisted for the prestigious Viktor Crime Award in Germany. An ever prolific author, Camilla has released the third part in her YA series and continues to write new thrillers.
About The Bachlorette Party (released June 10th 2025): Scream meets The Guest List in this wickedly compelling and compulsively page-turning thriller of friendship and murder from the author of The Lost Village, Camilla Sten.
People tend to be surprised when I tell them what I do for a living. Despite my tepid attempts at looking scary, it seems the occasional slash of black lipstick just isn’t enough to overcome what my husband calls my “Resting Asking-For-Directions-Face”. Apparently, I simply don’t look like the kind of person who would delight in brutally killing fictional characters – I look like someone who would be delighted to help you find that brunch place your friend told you that you simply had to try when you’re in town.
However, despite my friendly visage, my full-time job is writing books where people are brutally murdered. Over the last ten years, my characters have been stabbed with scissors, shot in the chest with sawed-off shotguns, and had their heads bashed in with glass jars. I’ve killed fictional characters via drowning, poisoning, and, on one occasion, stoning. In writing all those gruesome death scenes, I have come to two conclusions:
- I would not survive one of my own books. I would go into that dark, haunted basement immediately. I wouldn’t even hesitate. Therefore, I probably would not even make it through the prologue.
- There is a formula to dying in a slasher story – sneaking off to have sex will get you killed, as will having kept dark secrets from your friends, and, of course, there is the classic sheer stupidity – but there is no formula to surviving one.
I know a survivor character when I see one, but it’s not based on intelligence, skill, or perseverance. It’s based purely on vibes. And because I am an internet-poisoned millennial, I have made a list of six iconic 90’s characters who exemplify the vibes of a slasher survivor, to hopefully teach you how to survive if you ever find yourself stuck in a horror story.
6. Evelyn Carnahan – The Mummy
Evelyn Carnahan from the bisexual classic “The Mummy” would survive any one of my books, because she would never have gone on the doomed trip to begin with. Evelyn is an introverted librarian who dreams about adventure – she’d never engage in something so silly as a bachelorette party on an island where a murder might have taken place ten years earlier, or go on a location scouting trip for a documentary about a ghost town. She has got more important things to do. If Evelyn Carnahan was in one of my books, she’d be the smart friend who advised the main character against whatever stupid thing she was about to embark on in chapter one, and then she’d show up again in the epilogue to say “I told you so”. While the main characters were busy getting hacked to bits, Evelyn would probably have been curled up in bed with a cup of tea and a book on ancient Aramaic. The best way not to get murdered is to not leave the house at all.
5. Ian Malcolm – Jurassic Park
Unlike Evelyn, Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park would absolutely come along on whichever clearly doomed trip was taking place in my book. Not only would he be invited to the bachelorette party, but he would have been the first person in the group to get absolutely trashed on mimosas. This might make him seem like an obvious candidate for the first murder, but given his enormous charisma and sex appeal, I, the author, would have found him too much fun to kill off. Instead, I’d give him some sort of debilitating wound in the second act, keeping him out of the main action, and then a big hero-moment in the climax. Sometimes, charm is more powerful than smarts.
4. Spot – Star Trek: The Next Generation
I would never kill a cat in a horror book. Or in any book. I might spend my time dreaming up creative ways of butchering fictional people, but I’m not a monster.
3. The Lone Gunmen – The X-Files
“Hey, wait a second”, you might be saying, if, like me, you had an intense and abiding crush on Gillian Andersson in the 90’s. “What about Dana Scully?”
I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Scully would not make it through my book. She’s too skeptical and unwilling to believe. She’d keep finding normal, rational explanations for all the strange things going on until the killer took her out.
No, in order to survive a horror story, you need a healthy dose of paranoia. You have to be the kind of person who hears what might be a cat, and might be a masked killer, and immediately concludes it’s the second option. Therefore, the Lone Gunmen, the three conspiracy theorists from “The X-Files”, would do swimmingly. At the first sign of trouble, these three nerds would barricade themselves in the bathroom, send their location to the police, and use their investigative skills to figure out the whole plot before the cops even had time to turn on their sirens.
3. Cordelia Chase – Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel
She’s gorgeous. She’s popular. She does surprisingly well on standardized tests. Cordelia Chase might look like your classic beautiful bully, but she’s sharp as a tack. It takes brains to come up with all those gutting insults you still think about in the shower ten years later, and as the reigning queen of mean, Cordelia might be the smartest person on this list. Combined with a hidden heart of gold, this makes her a perfect candidate for the surprise ally – someone who at the beginning of the story seems like an antagonist, but teams up with the main character in the third act to take the killer out. Not only would Cordelia beat the murderer to a pulp with an empty bottle of tequila, but she’d look good doing it, too.
1. Johnny Bravo – Johnny Bravo
The power of a himbo in a horror story cannot be overstated.
In every single thriller I’ve written, the characters have been complicated, slightly broken people who find themselves a situation they couldn’t possibly have anticipated, fighting for their lives against impossible odds. That is because the horror of a horror story comes from the characters understanding the peril they are in; the dawning terror of realizing that the ground has suddenly shifted underneath you, and all your nightmares have come true.
Johnny Bravo would not understand this.
Johnny Bravo would, if beset by a psychopathic killer, either misunderstand the situation as some sort of game, or, if the killer was a woman, try to hit on her with a “Hey, mama”. This would throw the killer off completely. It would throw me, the author, off completely. It is possible the entire genre of the book would shift, against my will, from a slasher to a farce, or possibly a very strange romantic comedy.
Johnny Bravo would definitely survive one of my horror books. I am not sure I would survive Johnny Bravo.
